Yahoo! Jail

Hu Jintao is in the WH today. Talking about $ and ¬•, I am sure. Anyone else bored with pointing out that our God-Given Freedom with a capital F and Democracy with a capital D is not oppressed solely in Iran or Syria? I am not.

Today, Reporters sans fronti√®res revealed that Yahoo! collaborated with the Chinese authorities to reveal the identity of yet another reporter – who is now in jail. Jiang Lijun, Shi Tao and Li Zhi are all in jail because of Yahoo!. And, nary a peep from the Chosen One.

Why would Yahoo! cooperate with Chinese authorities?1 Because they have signed the Public Pledge of Self-Regulation and Professional Ethics for China Internet Industry which stipulates: Refraining from producing, posting or disseminating pernicious information that may jeopardize state security and disrupt social stability, contravene laws and regulations and spread superstition and obscenity. Monitor the information publicized by users on websites according to law and remove the harmful information promptly. Also, because they are evil bastards.

I will stop using Yahoo mail, search and even Flickr. One can always use smaller services for the mail (say myway.com), photo hosting (zoto.com), but I am not sure how to kill the Google addiction. I suspect Google is of loose principles as well.